


Never were, never will be

by a_sparrows_fall



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Blizzards & Snowstorms, Canon - Book, F/M, M/M, Missed Connection, Pining, Sexual flashback, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 04:50:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15332166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sparrows_fall/pseuds/a_sparrows_fall
Summary: To say the cave is ‘warm’ would be to show a rather vulgar disregard to fact.





	Never were, never will be

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of a sibling story to [That Which We Conceal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12720315), though I am not sure I'm going to properly put them together as a series.
> 
> Thank you to [Dordean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dordean/pseuds/Dordean) and [Kiko](http://con-affetto-kiko.tumblr.com/) for the wonderful beta assistance!

_“I can remember a night, not too far from here, if I'm not mistaken. We hid in a cave while a blizzard raged all about. Does that sound at all familiar?” - Regis, Blood and Wine_

* * *

To say the cave is ‘warm’ would be to show a rather vulgar disregard to fact.

Inside the gouge in the mountain, where their party has encamped for the evening, it can merely be described as... less cold. Fractionally less.

The name of the trail they’re about to embark upon, the _Malheur_ —translated as ‘misfortune’ in the Toussaintois dialect—is more representative of their situation.

He cannot be harmed by the cold, true. Not in a lasting way, not like the others; he’s read of treatments for frostbite and chilblains and the like, and he’s done all he can to ensure that he will not have to apply them to his companions come morning.

But being impervious to the extreme temperature does not mean that Regis enjoys it. 

Over the course of his existence, he has tended to take up residence in warmer climes. Perhaps it's the influence of his clan’s homeland at work on his physiognomy, some ancestral proclivity for river valleys washed with sunshine, surrounded by sheltering walls of rock—a form of tissue memory retention, he supposes; the idea puts him in mind of his dear friend Covinarius.

Whatever the case, he’s as unused to the cold as his companions seem to be.

Cahir is the first to curl up opposite the fire, trying to chase whatever miniscule amount of sleep can be wrested from this uncomfortable night.

Angoulême nearly appears to vibrate, so frequent and violent are the shivers racking her thin frame; Regis assumes she’ll be the next to curl up beside him.

But surprisingly, it’s Milva who, after several minutes of watching little white puffs of air escape the young man’s lips, looks at Geralt with a sigh.

“You’ll wake me? For the second watch?” she asks.

“Sure,” Geralt acquiesces, lips curling slightly.

It’s plain enough the witcher is lying. Milva shoots him a scowl.

But it’s a soft scowl, and Regis can see the archer is tired enough not to pursue the matter, and is, in fact, grateful for the chance to rest as much as possible.

Throwing her own blanket atop Cahir’s, then slipping beneath them both, Milva slides herself against the Nilfgaardian’s back, the fabric shifting as she wraps an arm around him.

Angoulême regards them for little more than a moment, their chills abating and their breathing becoming more and more even, before exclaiming, “ _fuck this_ ,” adding her blanket to the pile, and wrapping herself around Milva.

Regis laughs under his breath, the low sound swallowed up in the fabric of his shawl; few beholding the scene before him would suppose that less than half a year ago, one third of the participants of this snug arrangement struck the other two with her belt.

But now their exhalations and movements are not only the very picture of peace, but evoke the warmth of a deep affection as well.

Hardships often forge unusual alliances, but this is more than simple companionship born of duress. It’s almost—and this is difficult to admit, given the circumstances of his upbringing, but it is true nonetheless—familial.

A _hansa_ , a _hanse_ : as Angoulême once told them, it’s just a gang, a crew.

But Regis knows now that for as long as he may wander the world, that word will always have a second, deeper meaning for him.

All of them hail from vastly different corners of the continent, and would never have met if it weren’t for an odd quirk of fate.

Fate… and, of course, the witcher.

In a fit of pique, with timing and accuracy that could only be described as surgical (an irony not lost on Regis), Natanis once called Geralt _his_ witcher. It was—and is—an inappropriate and inaccurate description, but even now the memory of it sends a shiver through him that has more to do with heat than cold.

Which, naturally—horribly—Geralt notices.

“You okay?”

His voice is only a bit louder than a whisper, but it’s loud enough to startle. Regis glances at his recumbent fellows, but they show no signs of stirring.

Trying in vain to slough off the memory, Regis shrugs, drawing his shawl closer around his shoulders. “The cold can’t harm me.”

He glances at Geralt, whose typically wan complexion has taken on a faintly rosy glow from the fire.

“Not what I asked,” he retorts, a wry note in his voice.

“I’m fine,” Regis tells him, the response a touch too quick to sound genuine. His guard is slipping. It’s the exhaustion. It must be.

The witcher turns, cocking his head slightly to the side. 

“Why don’t you get some rest with the others?” He gestures gently at the rest of the party. “I know you might not have to sleep, but I’ve seen you do it. It’d be warmer, too.”

Well. It appears Geralt has been keeping an eye on his habits as much as the reverse.

It’s part of Regis’s duty as a surgeon to observe the wellbeing of his compatriots; he’s not sure what Geralt’s motives are. He keeps his face neutral at this revelation, careful only to smile when he finally responds, making it clear he’s making a little joke: “Then who would you have to talk to?”

A grim half-grin twists through Geralt’s face, the one that Regis has come to recognize as a mask worn when the witcher thinks of his past. A noblewoman in Toussaint called it a “horrid expression on the face of a horrid man”; to Regis, it’s come to surpass the brushstrokes of a Duvent, or the sculptures at Tir ná Béa Arainne: a thing of beauty, forged from pain.

“Normally I’d say Roach.” Geralt stokes the fire, referencing the mare he left in Toussaint, his tone taking on a faux lightness not dissimilar from Regis’s. “You’re a better conversationalist than she is, but you look miserable. Won’t be able to understand you if your teeth start chattering.”

Affronted, Regis _tsks_ at him. “It won’t come to anything as absurd as that.” A vampire with chattering teeth— _ridiculous_.

But Geralt grins again, and Regis’s irritation dissipates like sunkissed raindrops after a storm.

He finds his appreciation for his favorite smile is cut short by what Geralt says next.

“C’mere.”

For a moment, Regis simply blinks at him, his understanding of that simple invitation precarious at best.

“What?”

Geralt nods, indicating the space beside him. “Sit by me.”

He just… says it. As if it’s nothing, as if it’s that easy.

A stuttering laugh ripples low through Regis’s words, his surprise glaringly conspicuous. “No, really, there’s no need—”

Does Geralt know? How Regis feels about him? There’s no way this is an act of reciprocation. And Regis finds pity utterly intolerable—no, he can’t, he won’t—

“ _Regis_.” Geralt slices through his panic, his tone more assertive this time. He reaches out to the vampire, and Regis can see a slight tremble to his hand at he does it, along with one in his voice to match. “Get _over_ here and throw that cloak of yours over both of us. Now.”

“Ah.” Right. Of course. Geralt is simply cold, and doesn’t want to disturb the others. He _is_ human, after all, even if augmented in some ways.

Regis maintains a measured pace as he moves to Geralt, taking no chance in being perceived as rushing, though it’s unlikely Geralt would tease him for it the way Angoulême, or—even more plausibly—Milva might, were either of them awake.

He’s not quite touching Geralt when he unfastens his shawl, and doesn’t look at the witcher at all, staring instead at his own pale fingers, watching them with a vague sense of awe, as if he can’t quite believe the path they’re making along the edge of the fabric, as if they belong to a stranger.

He lays the wool out with care before them, and as he draws it up over their forms, he feels his breath hitch as he slides closer to Geralt, the whole of his side pressed up against the witcher, making the most of their small cloth covering.

The cold radiating from Geralt’s garb matches his own, the warmth of his person not yet seeping through, and for a moment, Regis can pretend he’s not leaning against another being—and is certainly not cuddled up against his very good friend—more than a friend, really—his—

“Better?” Geralt asks warmly, seemingly unaware of Regis’s inner turmoil-cum-elation.

“Mmm,” he manages.

Geralt’s occasional taciturnity, constructed—Regis can only assume—through years of solitude, descends on him, and likewise, Regis finds his own wellspring of words has run dry; the chamber is overtaken by a sterile silence, disturbed only by the distant sound of the wind whipping past the cave mouth: the rest of the world’s existence reduced to a low hum, more like the memory of a storm than the thing itself.

Regis is utterly still in his terror.

He can’t move, can barely _breathe_. If he moves at all, he’ll feel the friction of the cloth, how much Geralt’s skin has warmed in the scant seconds they’ve been huddled together, how his breathing is slowing and his body is relaxing, coaxing Regis’s own body to do likewise. A meager shred of comfort amplified by nearness, thrumming through him like an invitation. And he cannot accept.

It’s like nothing he’s ever imagined, because he’s never let himself imagine it.

Of all the powers and abilities he possesses that could be considered dangerous, most hazardous to himself is his own power of thought. The daydream of a stray lingering touch or a soft caress is innocuous enough, but it leads to fantasies of a brushing of lips, the darting of a tongue. From there, it’s all too easy to imagine investigative hands and whispers in the dark, not to mention other, deeper intimacies: slickness and friction and heat.

Some thoughts are, in a word, addictive.

And to let oneself be addicted to such warmth in a world so cold is to solicit the cruelest pain.

So Regis stays as still as he can. It’s unclear if Geralt notices anything out of the ordinary about the vampire’s behavior; the chill would be, perhaps, reason enough for his rigidity. He hopes so, in any case.

Finally, Geralt breaks the quiet again, apparently determined to hold Regis to his glib promise of conversation; Regis can feel his voice rumbling against his side. (Gods above.)

“Regis… Why are you here?”

He’s answered this question before, for both Geralt and others, and repeats his stock answer, even while suspecting it won’t satisfy the witcher’s curiosity in this case. “To help you rescue Ciri, of course.”

Geralt makes a humming noise, a hint of disapproval apparent in it. “Dandelion stayed with the Duchess,” he points out. “And your… friend. Seemed. Well. _Friendly_.” He makes a show of the too-polite euphemism; Regis doesn’t look, but can almost feel him grinning.

But faux civility is not enough to hold back Regis’s remembrances.

_(—she rolls under him like swelling tide, drawing him in: a despondent mortal lured to a watery grave, dashing him against her rocks again and again—_

_“Do you wish he was here with us now?”_

_“No,” he snarls through gritted teeth._

_But she is a creature whose very nature constantly demands more; she squeezes him like it’s a punishment, leaning up to claim his attention for her own, at least for a moment._

_He hisses like he’s been burnt._

_“Do you wish_ I _was him?” she asks._

 _He grunts at the top of his thrust, his voice louder than before._ “No.”

_But his closed eyes say far more than his words.)_

Regis swallows, an attempt to return to the present.

“...Most of the time,” he says.

Geralt’s head dips fractionally. “Wouldn’t have thought less of you if you’d stayed. You must know that.”

“It isn’t that,” Regis protests before wishing he hadn’t.

“Then what?”

He sighs softly, and tries not to think about how Geralt can feel his every exhalation.

He can disguise himself with words the way he does with herbs, a cloak, a human profession: hiding his intention in something anodyne. He’s done it before. 

It’s hard to find the air to push those words out, though.

“You must finish this quest, that is certain,” he says at length, choosing each syllable with the utmost precision. “No matter what it costs you. And I think we all have an inkling what that cost may be. And if my particular talents can prevent you from coming to some harm, I’m more than happy to lend them.”

Geralt’s voice is both wry and grim in equal measure. “In other words… I need all the help I can get.”

Regis chuckles softly. “Your natural ability for pithiness asserts itself again.”

The witcher is quiet for a few moments. “Are you sure that’s the only reason?”

A bloom of panic bursts in Regis’s chest, creeping up and threatening to close off his windpipe.

Does Geralt… know? After all this time?

There’s a slight wheeze to his voice when he speaks again. “One has to stave off boredom in these long years one way or another.”

Geralt doesn’t reply.

They sit beside each other in the stillness, and the too-taut tension of the moment gradually releases.

Regis exhales, allowing himself to settle in as much as he can, getting comfortable, but not too comfortable—an acceptable if not effortless place to spend the night—when Geralt shifts. Before Regis can react, can even track the movement, Geralt’s arm is arcing over his head, curling about his shoulders.

“Rest, Regis,” he sighs, exposing a hint of weariness not previously made known—not to him, and certainly not in front of the others. “One of us should.”

Regis’s lips part, but when he sees Geralt staring once more into the fire, he lets them fall shut again.

He’s miles away, likely already at Stygga castle. Thinking of Ciri… And of Yennefer, undoubtedly.

He hates the imprecision of the language employed, but it is the clearest form of such a truism: there is knowing something, and there is _knowing_ it.

And Regis realizes—though certainly he knew already—that this, all of this, the shared blanket, the warmth, the embrace, all of it, has nothing to do with him.

There is loneliness and anxiety and, yes, of course, friendly fondness, and even trust—a gift not to be scoffed at from a witcher, nor from Geralt in specific—but it has nothing to do with love, and never will.

In some ways, after the initial sting such clarity provides, it almost makes the situation easier.

Like a shard of ice held to the searing heat of the fire, Regis slowly melts into Geralt, letting his shoulder find the deepest curve of the witcher’s underarm, pressing fully into the angle of the slope of his body. He even dares to let his hand drift to the hollow just below Geralt’s ribcage, a gorgeous intersection of blood and bone and muscle and viscera, the soft core of him humming away beneath Regis’s fingertips, both too close and impossibly far.

As his head finds Geralt’s chest, he shuts his eyes, feeling the last of any lingering cold dissipate, the spaces between them entirely closed, all save for one.

 _Yes, this is lovely_ , he thinks. Very nearly lovely enough not to be painful. Very, very nearly.

* * *

He doesn’t sleep for hours—how could he?—but it would again be an untruth to say that he passes the time in an entirely wakeful state, either.

So he isn’t sure what time it is when he hears the very faint neighing of a horse.

He doesn’t open his eyes, because it simply can’t be real, can it? What horse could possibly have scaled the brutal ravines behind them? It’s a trick of the howling winds and nothing more.

Isn’t there a human parable about death riding a pale horse?

He smiles grimly into Geralt’s leathers, and feels his consciousness dimming once more.

* * *

The storm hasn’t passed by morning—indeed, the wail of the wind is so relentless one might question whether any time has passed at all.

Regis must have dozed off completely at some point in the wee hours, as he awakens on the cave floor alone, his cloak drawn around his form with care.

Geralt is nowhere to be seen.

But surprisingly, both Milva and Angoulême are awake, and appear to have been so for some time, sitting up and eagerly consuming the last of their more perishable goods from Toussaint. Cahir, too, is beginning to stir.

It’s rare that the others wake before him, and rarer still that their initial movements aren’t enough to rouse him from his own slumber.

He pushes aside thoughts of how strongly his proximity to Geralt seems to have correlated with a lowering of his defenses, not to mention his achieving a very sound night’s rest, even in the worst of conditions.

“Morning,” Angoulême greets him, handing him a crust of rapidly hardening bread, her gesture plain and and her mood amiable. He waves it away and catches Milva’s eye, spying nothing there save a residual sleepiness and perhaps some irritation from the continued cold.

Neither woman regards him with even a hint of cheek in her manner, so he can only assume Geralt must have left him alone before they ended their own repose. (Milva in particular--who is as keen-eyed as you’d expect an archer to be, and who knows a great deal more than she should about Regis--would likely have words about his predicament if she was aware of it.)

No artifact of the night before remains, not even memory, save for those belonging to the participants; all trace of what transpired has blown away entirely, like so many footprints in a blizzard.

He’s barely cognizant of the few pleasantries he exchanges with his traveling companions before excusing himself, stepping just out of their line of sight just as he slips into his mist form.

A handful of feet away from the cave’s yawning mouth is a kneeling figure with hair as colorless as the cascades of snow blowing all about them, looking himself like a herald of Tedd Deireádh.

Regis solidifies back into his human guise, making sure to make his steps heavy enough to disturb Geralt’s meditation ever so slightly, alerting the witcher to his presence.

Geralt blinks himself out of his trance and releases a sigh.

“Something wrong?” Regis asks in earnest, glancing back and forth between his friend and the nearly opaque yet ever shifting wall of white before them both. He can see nothing of interest outlined in the squall, and strongly suspects it’s the same for Geralt.

“I had the strangest feeling last night.” The witcher’s expression and voice are hanging heavy with the same weariness as the night before. “Thought I felt… someone out there. So I—”

He cuts himself off, shaking his head as he does so. “It’s nothing.”

Regis watches Geralt get to his feet just as the rest of their crew shuffles into earshot, bundling themselves in preparation for the long, cold trek, and the vampire finds himself less than convinced by Geralt’s dismissive words.

He’s alluded to his dreams before, that they’ve occasionally been prophetic. If he gave the slightest hint that this ‘feeling’ was in the same vein, Regis would already be on his way through the air, scouring the vicinity for anyone, anything at all. He would—

He stops himself. What _wouldn’t_ he do for Geralt?

It’s meant to be something of a light-hearted thought, nothing more than easy self-deprecation.

But something about the cold, the blizzard, the sky so bright and yet so dark at once, fills him with foreboding.

“Regis, you coming?”

Geralt, his shawl now wrapped around his head and shoulders, his pale face framed by black cloth, looking even more grim than usual, turns to him, and Regis realizes he’s the only remaining member of the hansa not prepared to venture forth into the storm.

“As I’ll ever be,” the vampire notes, wrapping himself up like the others.

They set out into the cold.

But it’s only minutes before they’re stopped again, this time by one of their own. Angoulême’s thin cries carry just above the wind, demanding their attention.

“Lookie! There! There are tracks! Someone rode that way!”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos make my day! ♥


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